Via the WWII mailing list comes the welcome news that Flight International is putting its entire run of back issues online, as one searchable PDF per magazine page. So far, the following years have been scanned: 1909-1932, 1935-1940, 1948, 1955-1961, 1964, 1966-1968, 1997-2004. The archive can either be browsed (note that you have to click the "Next page" link to move to the next group of four page listings, which wasn't immediately obvious to me) or searched by keyword.
The significance of this is that Flight was one of the two major British aviation magazines throughout most of my period, and the longest-running (though not, I think actually the first: Pemberton Billing's short-lived Aerocraft has that honour). I've actually already looked at Flight, which is available at the SLV, so I would rather have had the harder-to-find Aeroplane put online instead; but Australian holdings of the early issues of Flight are fragmentary so this is good too.
There are no charges for access, at least for now, which is surprising (and welcome). No indications that this will change in future, but it would probably be wise to make the most of this while it's free!
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Paul Gilster
What welcome news! Fascinating to look through these issues. It will clearly absorb several hours of my time over the weekend...
Roger Todd
What an absolutely magnificent resource, Brett, thank you for posting this alert to it!
On the other hand, damn you Holman! Something else to consume hours of my time at work, *cough* sorry, at home on t'internet...
Paul Gilster
I have to admit that Roger also has a valid point!
Brett Holman
Post authorThe management of Airminded will not be held responsible for any unemployment resulting from following any links posted here!
Brendan Dowd
I have come across original back issues of Flight International 1969-1974 and other magazines such as Airscene and Aeroplane. Is there a good place to sell them on to collectors?
Brett Holman
Post authorSorry, I have no idea.
Ross
Just noticed this. Very good news. Must do some searching next week.
Brett Holman
Post authorDo try to keep up, Ross!
BTW, I'm not much enamoured of the search engine provided by Flight; I usually use Google by adding 'site:flightglobal.com/pdfarchive/view', and maybe adding a year to restrict it further, eg. 'site:flightglobal.com/pdfarchive/view/1910'.
JDK
Anyone wondering why they don't get anything from Ross next week, now knows why.
(I have a huge folder (if it weren't on the computer, it'd be 'bulging') of 'interesting' items found on Flight.)
Sebastian
I have approx 200 back issues of Flight from early 1960s.............
For sale!